Obama and Empire...

[Ben]

Australian activist John Pilger:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXL998q7skI&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fsocialistworker.org%2F&feature=player_embedded

[Rogers]

Pilger never minces his words and makes Chomsky look like a wimp in my opinion. He makes Feith and Bolton look like the asses they truely are in this documentary:
Breaking The Silence - Truth and Lies in the War on Terror (HQ) by John Pilger
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-210088912352527308&ei=Zj6BSoC7PImC-AbVzqyBAg&q=tell+me+no+lies+pilger&hl=en

From his speech:

"Obama didn’t say what he did at Business International."
The company has been identified as cover organization for the Central Intelligence Agency, e.g. see Lobster Magazine, issue 14 in 1987. According to a lengthy article in the New York Times in 1977, the co-founder of the company told the newspaper that "Eldridge Haynes [the other founder] had provided cover for four CIA employees in various countries between 1955 and 1960".[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_International_Corporation

"Woody Allen once said, “I felt a lot better when I gave up hope”."

"The free market has nothing to do with freedom."

"This is how Apartheid South Africa was defeated."
http://www.bdsmovement.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott,_Divestment_and_Sanctions
"And this is how the great wind of the 1960’s began to blow. And this is how every game has been won, the end of slavery, universal suffrage, workers rights, civil rights, environmental protection, the list goes on and on."

"Ordinary Americans for too long have been misrepresented…"
Watch what he says in the 5 minutes from 27 minutes on!
"At the time of universal deceit wrote George Orwell, "telling the truth is a revolutionary act"."
:claps :claps :claps

[Rogers]

"Zbigniew Brzezinski:
How Jimmy Carter and I Started the Mujahideen
Interview of Zbigniew Brzezinski Le Nouvel Observateur (France), Jan 15-21, 1998, p. 76*

Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

Brzezinski: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?

Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic [integrisme], having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.

Brzezinski: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.

* There are at least two editions of this magazine; with the perhaps sole exception of the Library of Congress, the version sent to the United States is shorter than the French version, and the Brzezinski interview was not included in the shorter version.

The above has been translated from the French by Bill Blum author of the indispensible, "Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II" and "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower" Portions of the books can be read at: <http://members.aol.com/superogue/homepage.htm>"
http://www.counterpunch.org/brzezinski.html

[Rogers]

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA
Interventions Since World War II.
by William Blum
http://killinghope.org/

[Rogers]

"Why We Fight (2005), directed by Eugene Jarecki, is a documentary film about the military-industrial complex. The title refers to the World War II-era eponymous newsreels commissioned by the U.S. Government to justify their decision to enter the war against the Axis Powers.

Why We Fight was first screened at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival on 17 January 2005, exactly forty-four years after President Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell address. It won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary, however, it received a limited public cinema release on 20 January 2005, and then was released, rated PG-13, on DVD on 27 June 2005, by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We_Fight_(2005_film)

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9219858826421983682

[Rogers]

Obama’s empire
by Catherine Lutz
Catherine Lutz is a professor at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University and editor of "The Bases of Empire: the Global Struggle against US Military Posts".

"The 44th president of the United States was elected amid hopes that he would roll back his country’s global dominance. Today, he is commander-in-chief of an unprecedented network of military bases that is still expanding."
http://www.newstatesman.com/asia/2009/07/military-bases-world-war-iraq

And America can't afford decent, affordable healthcare for it's own citizens? Makes sense, I guess, if you're a retard!!!

[techi]

Obama’s empire
by Catherine Lutz
Catherine Lutz is a professor at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University and editor of "The Bases of Empire: the Global Struggle against US Military Posts".

"The 44th president of the United States was elected amid hopes that he would roll back his country’s global dominance. Today, he is commander-in-chief of an unprecedented network of military bases that is still expanding."
http://www.newstatesman.com/asia/2009/07/military-bases-world-war-iraq


Chalmers Johnson wrote a very good book on this subject:
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic
http://www.amazon.com/Sorrows-Empire-Militarism-Republic-American/dp/0805070044

He's an old cold warrior(ex Navy&CIA) who became a critic of post Cold War US foreign policy. There are plenty of critics of "Empire" on the right&center as well as on the left.

Anyway, the book goes into detail about our extensive base build up, the nature of SOFA(Status of forces agreements) involved with said bases and thier negative impact on local communities. And of course, a historical outline of empire and why it's a threat to our Republic.

[techi]

"Zbigniew Brzezinski:
How Jimmy Carter and I Started the Mujahideen
Interview of Zbigniew Brzezinski Le Nouvel Observateur (France), Jan 15-21, 1998, p. 76*

Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?



Speaking of Afghanistan, some unfortunate information is surfacing regarding the continued funding of the Taliban.

- Far less drug money is supporting the Taliban than previously thought. The Warlords who we currently support still collect the lionshare of the drug money.
- Protection money from foreign contractors has been flowing to the Taliban as we try to rebuild Afghanistan
- And of course, donations from our supposed allies in the Gulf states

http://blogs.reuters.com/global/2009/08/13/who-is-funding-the-afghan-taliban-you-dont-want-to-know/
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2009/08/afghanistan_taliban_inskeep_op.html

Counter insurgencies are horribly expensive and often futile to fight conventionally. I think we are sending our men into an endless meat grinder against a popular uprising in Afghanistan.

The US taxpayer cannot afford it and the US military cannot win it. Either our establishment has gone insane or maybe Brzezinski&Gates have decided to put Afghanistan back under Taliban control.

[El Nino]

Wait, I thought that Obama was bringing messianic change???

[hippifried]

There you go pretending to think again.

[Ben]

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA
Interventions Since World War II.
by William Blum
http://killinghope.org/

William Blum is very good. He said of Obama, well, Obama has no core beliefs and he doesn't care about issues. Obama, like Bush and Clinton and Reagan and on and on, are mere corporate stooges....

[techi]

There you go pretending to think again.

Hippi, at this point how can our presence in Afghanstan be a positive? What stated goals can we possibly achieve?

IMO we should be on our way out of there.

[hippifried]

It isn't & there aren't any. We should have never been there in the first place. This is all just a continuation of the perpetual war. It's memetic bullshit.